Education Sector: Equality of Opportunity

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The right reverend Prelate is absolutely right that regional inequalities at key stage 2, GCSE and A-level are not just persistent but, certainly in some of those cases, have become worse. That is why the Government and the Department for Education are absolutely committed to ensuring that, wherever you live in England and whatever your background, you will have access to the highest-quality teachers and the best possible curriculum. This is the reason for our launching the curriculum and assessment review. That is absolutely at the heart of the Government’s opportunity mission.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the latest figures show that 65% of Asian girls and 61% of black girls on free school meals go to university. That is fantastic, and a credit to them and their parents. But the comparable figure for white working-class boys on free school meals is just 15%. Getting on for 70% of young people from some wealthy London boroughs go to university, but the figure is less than 20% in places such as Barrow, Blackpool, the south Wales valleys and Grimsby, for example. What will the Government do to deal with this massive problem of educational inequality?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend is right that white working-class boys are among the lowest-attaining groups in our schools. That links to the point about regional inequality made previously. It is why the opportunity mission is absolutely clear that we need to break the link between background and success. That means more highly qualified teachers in front of our students. It means making sure that children, whatever their background, get to school, are well-fed and are able to learn, which is the reason for our rolling out breakfast clubs in primary schools. It also means that this Government are absolutely focused on raising standards in all our schools for all our children.

Higher Education: Financial Pressures

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my entry in the register of interests and, in particular, my work with Dudley College and the Warwick Manufacturing Group. I also thank my noble friend Lord Knight not just for calling this debate but for the huge contribution he makes, and has made for years, to improving education in the UK.

I want to make the case I have been making for years, which is that we have to make education and skills, at all levels, the UK’s number one priority. Improving education is the answer to our country’s biggest challenges, as it brings new investment, new industries and good, well-paid jobs to areas that have lost traditional industries. It tackles poverty and improves social mobility, builds a stronger economy and boosts productivity. It not only enables young people to lead more fulfilled and prosperous lives but reduces the costs of inequality and poverty on the NHS, on housing and on benefits.

Young people today will work with technologies that have not yet been invented and have jobs not yet imagined. The old days when you learned skills to equip you for a job for life have gone for good. Instead, the pace of change will get quicker and quicker, so young people must learn how to adapt, how to learn and how to acquire new skills. This is why investing in education and skills is the most important investment any of us can make as individuals, communities, the Government or the country as a whole.

At the outset, I want to lay to rest the idea that we send too many young people to university. If I may so, it is total nonsense. For the people who say this, if I may say this as well, it is never their children or young people from their community who they think should not be going to university. When they say it they are talking about young people in places like the Black Country.

There are communities that have routinely sent more than half their young people to university for years. There are schools, families and communities where going to university is, and has been for decades, the normal, expected thing to do. Then there are towns across the country that have no university campus, where school standards have not been good enough and which have sent a small minority of young people to university. Yet these are the places that most need higher skills, and the new industries and jobs that those skills can attract. The truth is that we need to ensure standards at school improve, that more young people stay on and go to college and sixth form, to apprenticeships or to university. We need to do all these things to equip our country for the challenges of the modern economy.

The point I want to focus on is the contribution that universities make to their local communities. You only have to get off the train at Cambridge to be stunned at the level of investment that its link to science, education and research has made in that city. If you go to Coventry and Warwickshire, you will see industries, companies and jobs that have resulted from the world-beating partnerships between academia and industry at the Warwick Manufacturing Group. Then you travel 30 miles up to the road to the Black Country, which has struggled to replace jobs lost in traditional industries over the last 40 or 50 years.

This is the approach we have adopted in Dudley, with a brand new £100 million town centre campus, which includes a new institute of technology and plans for a university centre focused on healthcare technologies. We are making education the borough’s number one priority, to strengthen the local economy. But one of the challenges that towns in the Midlands and the north that have lost traditional industries face is that they often have no university to boost skills and drive growth.

For example, the Black Country is an area of four boroughs and 1.1 million people, but just one local university, the University of Wolverhampton. As I will explain, like other modern new universities, the University of Wolverhampton does a brilliant job of serving local people, but the boroughs in the area are some of the largest places in the country with no university campuses. The region as a whole has less higher education provision than other areas, which is one of the reasons why we have higher levels of unemployment.

This is why, where we once built communities around factories, we must now build them around universities and colleges. That is why universities like the University of Wolverhampton need more support from the Government and must be able to attract and teach more students. Look at the facts: research in 2019 showed that the university, its students and their visitors—as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said earlier—supported nearly 4,000 jobs locally, while MillionPlus’s report last year, Staying Local to Go Far, showed it contributes almost £200 million to the local economy and that modern universities generate £1.17 billion in the wider West Midlands.

More than eight out of 10 of Wolverhampton’s 21,000 students come from within 25 miles. One in every three undergraduates is on subjects allied to medicine, training to become nurses and health professionals. Almost nine out of 10 of the graduates from the most recent cohort were in work or further study, according to the latest Graduate Outcomes report, and six out of 10 UK students went on to highly skilled rates. Compared with other universities, more of Wolverhampton’s students not only are recruited locally, as I said, but remain in the local area, contributing to the local economy and driving its improvement after graduation too.

Wolverhampton is not unique in this regard. Lots of the modern universities are like this and have a high proportion of students from poorer backgrounds, who have been in care or on free school meals, who are from families that have not sent other people to university or are from neighbourhoods with fewer students and graduates. Universities such as Wolverhampton—all of these modern universities—are critical to the Government’s levelling-up ambitions, to tackling poverty and to building a stronger economy. They are critical for the important role they still play in working collaboratively with local stakeholders, such as the NHS, businesses and local government, to drive regional development and strengthen the social fabric of the cities and towns in which they are located. It is vital that the Government ensure that universities and communities such as these, in the towns of the Midlands and the north that have lost their traditional industries and which desperately need to attract new investment and new jobs, receive more support. This is not just important for them but vital for the country as a whole.

School (Reform of Pupil Selection) Bill [HL]

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Friday 2nd December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the register of interests and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, for giving us the opportunity to discuss this issue.

The central point I want to make today is that we have to make education, and improving standards in education for all young people, our country’s number one priority. In a world in which technology and skills are crucial but in which we are finding it harder and harder to compete, there can be no more important issue. Improving education would enable us to tackle all sorts of issues. It would not just help young people to lead more prosperous and fulfilled lives but strengthen the economy, help us to tackle the deficit, bring new investment and better jobs to towns that have lost traditional industries and reduce the costs of inequality and poverty on the NHS, housing and benefits.

Unfortunately, when it comes to literacy and numeracy, we are lagging behind our competitors. It is not just countries such as China and South Korea; we are struggling even to compete with post-communist nations—Estonia, Poland and Slovenia. For decades, Germany has provided many more apprenticeships and had much better technical education.

Let us look at the challenges in education: so many working-class pupils, particularly white, working-class boys, leaving school without even basic qualifications; decades of not taking technical education seriously enough or providing enough apprenticeships; and a teacher recruitment crisis. Look at yesterday’s scandalous figures showing the plummeting number of young people going into teacher training. Look at the catastrophe of Covid for children from poor or overcrowded homes or those with special needs.

Given all that, who would say, as the Minister for School Standards appointed in September did—thankfully, he is no longer in office—that their “biggest fear of all” in education is the abolition of charitable status for private schools? Whatever you think of the idea, who would say it is the biggest problem in education?

Likewise, given the scale and urgency of the task of improving education for all young people, I am not sure that abolishing selection should be the top priority for an incoming Labour Government. I understand the objections set out to selection at 11, of course, but the Explanatory Notes say the Bill would also prevent schools with sixth forms from selecting pupils for A-levels. What about the BRIT School, which does a very good job on performing and creative arts? What would be the impact on other specialist schools?

Whether we like it or not, selection is a major feature of our education system, whether it is a few state schools, private fee-paying schools or parents buying a home near the best state schools. The question is not whether selection takes place but who gets to choose and on what basis.

According to the Sutton Trust, only 7% of pupils attend independent schools but they produce seven out of 10 High Court judges, more than half our leading journalists and doctors and more than a third of our MPs. Five public schools send more pupils to Oxbridge than 2,000 state schools—two-thirds of the entire sector.

Look what happened in Covid: every independent school I know provided a full timetable on Zoom from day one. I do not begrudge them that at all. Spending money on education for young people, either as a parent or as society as a whole, is the best investment possible, but I do not know a single state school—comprehensive, selective or otherwise—where that happened. Children from poor or overcrowded homes were hit worst of all, so the gulf between poor children and the rest—already a scandal, and greater in the UK than anywhere else—gets bigger than ever.

Instead of abolishing selection, we should look to open up elite private schools to all pupils on the basis of ability, which is what the Sutton Trust proposes. That would open access to leading independent schools by selecting pupils for all places purely on merit, with parents paying a sliding scale of fees according to their means. When this was piloted in Liverpool, open access saw academic standards improve and the social mix of schools become more diverse, with 30% of pupils on free school places and 40% paying partial fees. Top independent schools are prepared to take part in trailblazer programmes on this, benefiting thousands of pupils every year whose parents could not afford fees. Extending that to 100 or more leading—

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

The noble Lord is making his case, but the school in which it was piloted in Liverpool, the Belvedere School, has since joined the state system as a state academy and does not have selective admissions or fees any more. Might there not be a lesson from this that if more of these elite private schools joined the state system, access to them would be much more open than with them charging fees of £15,000, £20,000, £25,000, £30,000, £35,000, £40,000 or £45,000 a year?

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

I am afraid that my hearing aid meant I missed the first part of the noble Lord’s question, but I got the gist of it. I think the answer is that there is not much chance of that happening, but there is a chance that they are prepared to join the Sutton Trust programme. That would have a dramatic effect on the diversity of these schools and the opportunities open to young people from poorer homes.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, mentioned Belvedere, but there is also the independent selective school Liverpool College, which is now an academy with no selection; and St Edward’s College, which was a selective independent school, is now an academy. The results are better than when they were grammar schools.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

That is fantastic to hear, of course. Can I seek some guidance? Do I get a bit longer after the interventions? Does it work like in the Commons, where we get more?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, given that there have been a couple of interventions, a minute longer.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

I am very grateful for that. My other point is to ask why the Government cannot increase choice and competition by allowing popular and oversubscribed schools with consistently good results, strong governance and sound finances to provide more places. The problem at the moment is that funding follows the pupils. Oversubscribed schools cannot provide places to accommodate more pupils. Allowing them to provide the facilities first and then pay back the cost of expanding the facilities through the money that the additional pupils generate would deal with that problem.

I am very grateful for the extra time I have been given. I will not read the rest of my speech, but I am grateful to have had the opportunity to contribute to this debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, writing notes to reply to a debate on the hoof when you are also listening to speeches is tricky, and something that clearly I must develop more fully. I thank all noble Lords who have engaged in this debate. Like my noble friend Lord Watson, I genuinely believe that this is a Bill whose time has come. Many people have long campaigned over the issue of selection, which, as noble Lords will recall from my opening speech, I choose to refer to as “rejection of the many”. We have done that because we genuinely believe that the comprehensive principle is the right one. Recent publicity has shown that even many years after the experience of failing the 11-plus people still feel damaged by it. The testimony given by my noble friend Lord Hendy indicates that even people who are supremely successful—as the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, KC obviously is—have that feeling within them that somehow or other there was a point at which they were not quite good enough.

I note that the contributions on the Bill have come from all sides of your Lordships’ House. I particularly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, for expressing the view that her education would have been poorer had it been in a school that had a grammar school profile. That was a significant contribution, and it speaks to how the social integration, rather than social segregation, in comprehensive schools is deeply felt by a lot of people and very important to them. I say to her that I will do a lot more work on micro-geography, which is a really interesting issue.

I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Watson’s preference for the expression “social justice” rather than “social mobility”. If noble Lords take anything away from this debate, they might take away his remark that no child should be “required to earn a place” at secondary school. The fact is that children have a right to be educated to secondary level.

Social class, whether it is described as that or as being disadvantaged, less wealthy or other things, has run through this debate. Clearly there is an issue here about the fact that some families have much greater resources than others, which means that they have privileged access in different ways. For me, this is a significant issue.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, mentioned the inequality wrought in society by the very fact of the existence of grammar schools. Quite a lot has been written about the fact that, if you achieve a grammar school place, you are likely, certainly at some stages of your life, to have a more successful career. Frankly, we do not think that this is the proper way for the education system to be organised.

My noble friend Lord Davies referenced the Time’s Up for the Test campaign that was launched last evening, in a piece of extraordinarily brilliant coincidental timing, since that meeting was arranged before any of us knew that Second Reading would happen today. I was not present, but I understand that it was very successful and gave an opportunity to discuss these issues outside this Chamber. It demonstrates that, although people are able to assert—because they feel they can—that grammar schools are popular, there is also the much less discussed fact that grammar schools are not popular with a whole range of people. I am pleased about that timing and that he talked about one of the aspects of education being how we learn to live together. We do so with a much narrower group of people if we are in a grammar school than if we are in a comprehensive school.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, made a great speech; I am glad that he was able to stay in the Chamber long enough to make it. He referred to the hospital analogy, also referred to by my noble friend Lord Hunt—this is an apt and well-made point.

The devastation of many children and families at failing the 11-plus was described by many speakers, particularly my noble friend Lord Hunt. Noble Lords probably underestimate how serious this is.

I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Austin, brought some perspectives to this that meant that it actually was a debate, and I would be happy to discuss this further with him. I realise that it is absolutely true that there is a lot to do in education. I simply feel that this step can be taken now; it is a good step, and it would improve our education system.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

If the noble Baroness thinks that this should be the priority for an incoming Labour Government above all the other problems the education system is facing, why does she think the last Labour Government—several speakers in this debate, including me, were Ministers in it, and one was the Schools Minister—did nothing about this in 13 years?

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

Since I was not in the Government, I cannot tell the noble Lord what their thinking was. Sometimes the priorities of parties in government are not the right ones. I believe this would be an important priority for any incoming Labour Government to take on. My—

Schools: Resources

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The number of children who are in receipt of free school meals is at the highest level it has ever been—37% of the school population.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, education ought to be the country’s number one priority, so school budgets should be the very last place the Government look to make savings, particularly after children had such a terrible time during the pandemic. I do not know a single state school that continued to provide a full timetable during lockdown. Children from poor or overcrowded homes, or those with special needs, will find their lives blighted for ever. The Government need to do much more to sort this out.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am not entirely clear what the noble Lord’s question was. The Government do work very closely with schools to support them to do this. The balance that we need to strike is to make sure that schools are using funding as efficiently as possible, and we need to understand the pressures under which they operate.

Schools: Examination Assessments

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Tuesday 12th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I know that the noble Lord has been a champion of summer-born children, and I understand that he is one himself. As I am a winter-born child, obviously we might not see eye to eye on this. But we have had to take into account multiple elements in thinking about the adaptations for this summer, and we have tried to reach the fairest possible point in both adaptations to the system and in grading.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, given all the problems caused by the pandemic, is this not the moment to have a proper review of what children need to learn, how they should be taught it and how they should be assessed? Despite the Minister’s previous answer, there is a case for looking at the need for exams at 16 when young people are remaining in education until they are 18. Should we not specialise at 14, with proper, serious technical and vocational education, as well as more academic subjects for those who want to pursue them, and how should we change the curriculum to take into account new technologies and new ways of learning?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord will be aware that we are planning a White Paper on many of these areas, but our priority in the short term—I am sure the House would support this—is on recovery and catch-up for all children, particularly those who have been most impacted in their learning by the pandemic.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I can give the hon. Lady that assurance, yes.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Ind)]

2. What plans the Government has to allocate funding to educational facilities in Dudley.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Gavin Williamson)]

Dudley will benefit from the substantial additional investment in education, including £14 billion for schools across England over the next three years, and £400 million for 16-to-19 education next year, on top of additional money provided to cover pension costs.

[Ian Austin]

It is my job to stand up for Dudley, so I am absolutely delighted that our campaign for a new university-level technical skills and apprenticeship centre has paid off, with the announcement on Friday that we were getting £25 million from the stronger towns fund. Is this not exactly what is needed to bring good, new, well-paid jobs in high-tech industries such as advanced manufacturing, digital media, low carbon technologies, autonomous electric vehicles and healthcare to replace those that the Black Country has lost in traditional industries?

[Gavin Williamson]

I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman and to my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) for all the work they have done in campaigning to deliver this for Dudley, and for the work they have done to deliver the institute of technology in Dudley as well. That will all go towards generating the right skills and the right educational outcomes not only for the whole town of Dudley but much more widely. I very much hope to visit Dudley. Hopefully, the hon. Gentleman will be able to join me to discuss how we can do more for Dudley and the surrounding area.

Post-18 Education and Funding

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

The changes that we made in the move to maintenance loans increased the cash support available to young people starting at university by some 10%. There have been subsequent increases of 2.8% and 3.2%, and we have announced a 2.8% increase for 2019-20, as well as making maintenance loans available on a part-time basis. However, we must continue to keep these matters under review, and I welcome the report’s contribution in that regard.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Ind)]

Will the Secretary of State meet me or, preferably, come to Dudley, so that he can see how we are making education and skills the No. 1 priority for the borough? We are aiming to strengthen our economy, building on the brilliant work at Dudley College of Technology, the best college in the country, not just through the new institute of technology—for which we have just received £32 million, and we are very grateful—but through a new high-tech skills centre which will provide university-level qualifications in new high-tech industries? That will enable us to attract new jobs and new investment in exciting areas of the economy for the future, and to replace the jobs that we have lost in traditional industries.

[Damian Hinds]

I am well aware of the high reputation of Dudley College, and of some of the collaborative work that is being done. It is always a delight to meet the hon. Gentleman, and I look forward to doing so again soon.

British Sign Language: National Curriculum

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ian Austin (in the Chair)]

I draw Members’ attention to the fact that today’s proceedings are being made accessible to people who are deaf or hearing-impaired. The interpreters are using British Sign Language, and Parliament TV is showing a live, simultaneous interpretation of the debate. I call Liz Twist to move the motion.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 200000 relating to British Sign Language being part of the national curriculum.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Austin. Last September, I had the pleasure of meeting Erin, a young woman involved in the National Deaf Children’s Society. Erin told me very clearly that many young people such as her who are deaf feel strongly that British Sign Language should be taught in schools, and that it should become a GCSE subject. As a result, more young people would be able to learn BSL, and it would be properly recognised as a language qualification, equal to other GCSEs. Erin’s determination, and her clear explanation of why BSL should be a GCSE subject made a lasting impression on me. When today’s petition, created by Wayne Barrow, who is in the Gallery, came before the Petitions Committee, I was keen to speak on it, and to introduce it on behalf of Wayne, the many other petitioners and Erin.

Other hon. Members on the Committee were very conscious that, although the petition had not reached 100,000 signatures, which is the usual threshold, the issue should be considered by the House, because it is difficult to ask for 100,000 signatures when fewer than 100,000 people speak BSL as their first language. The Committee was also very keen that the debate be signed, so that young deaf people, and the not so young, could follow the debate as it happened—a first for a live debate in this House. I hope it is the first of many, as Parliament reaches out and becomes more inclusive. I thank our signers, the Committee and the House staff who made it possible.

What a day to be holding this debate, after the British film, “The Silent Child”, won the Oscar for best live-action short film last night. Furthermore, the acceptance speech by actress Rachel Shenton was signed—another achievement, and another step forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz Twist]

I thank all hon. Members who made contributions to the debate. Most of it was fairly upbeat. It is a shame about the ending, but I will come on to that.

I thank the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) for his support for the cause. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on deafness; my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy); and my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), who so powerfully reminded us that it is we who are erecting barriers, not people who have hearing difficulties or deafness, which is an important point to remember. I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) for her contribution and my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler). Some really interesting and exciting points were made, all of them supporting the need for us to be more inclusive and to reach out and include young people with deafness, about whom we are talking today.

Then we come to the Minister’s comments. I have to say that I was really disappointed. I asked the Minister to go further than he had in his written response. I am disappointed that we have not been able to go further today. I heard all the reasons he gave, but we need a can-do approach. We have a problem and we need to find a way around it, so that all our young people can take part not only in school activities, but in life in the wider community, through the development of a BSL GCSE and the inclusion of BSL as a curriculum subject. I remain convinced, having been a governor in a number of schools, that it is really difficult to find time to teach BSL, although it is allowed. I look forward to his further discussions with the APPG.

I hope that there will be a change in the future to include BSL in the national curriculum and to recognise a GCSE qualification. I do not think that Wayne and his mates, Erin and other young people are going away. I think we will hear much more about this issue in the next few days. I am reminded that next week is Sign Language Week. I think there will be a lot going around among the Twitterati and the public about this, so watch out for a lot more questions from the public, as well as from hon. Members, on this issue.

To finish, I remind everyone that although we have spent a lot of time talking about the national curriculum and GCSEs, this is all about allowing deaf young people to be included in activities and school life, and to just have some fun, like Wayne and his mates do. I thank hon. Members and I am sure we will come back to this issue.

[Ian Austin (in the Chair)]

Before Members leave, I want to formally thank the interpreters who have been translating this debate into BSL, the people who have been organising the live simultaneous interpretation on television, and the Officers of the House who have made all of this possible.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 200000 relating to British Sign Language being part of the national curriculum.

International Men’s Day

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Ian Austin (in the Chair)]

I shall call the Front Benchers to speak at about 10.30, so it would be helpful if Back Benchers could keep their remarks to about six minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) on securing the debate and on his excellent speech. Like my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) in his similarly excellent speech, I want to talk about the importance of promoting active fatherhood to help to improve children’s life chances, particularly among the least advantaged.

Supporting young men to be active, engaged fathers is, I believe, a matter of social justice, in which the Government should be engaged. Evidence clearly shows that it helps to reduce inequality. Children from low-income households with an active father are 25% more likely to escape the poverty that they grow up in. Time prohibits me from explaining further to colleagues, as I would like to have done, the evidence on this issue, but it can be seen in the research from the Fatherhood Institute entitled, “Fathers’ impact on their children’s learning and achievement”, which is on its website—fatherhoodinstitute.org. It can also be seen in the work of Dr Gary Clapton, who says, interestingly, that active fatherhood is linked to girls’ better educational engagement as well as boys’.

All the indicators are that children who grow up with active fathers in their lives have better life chances, so what can the Government do to address this issue? At the most extreme end of the spectrum, as we have heard, 76% of all male prisoners come from households without a father figure, and boys who have little or no involvement with their fathers are twice as likely to become offenders. There are many practical ways to address the issue, and I am delighted that the Ministry of Justice is committed to doing so

Following the recent release of the Farmer report, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah), has committed the Department to helping men in prison to maintain an active relationship with their children. Governors are now encouraged, where they can, to house prisoners closer to their families and to have available family rooms, where children can be helped with homework. In some prisons, prisoners can record bedtime stories that their children can listen to at home. In general, arrangements are being made to facilitate a strengthening of father-children relationships, so that, when prisoners exit prison, there is a family life that they can, hopefully, return to and that has even been strengthened.

That is just one way of addressing the issue; the Centre for Social Justice has many other suggestions. Again, time prohibits me from going through them all, but to promote more active fatherhood, the CSJ suggests that best practice on this in local authorities across the country should be co-ordinated; there should perhaps be a champion to do that. It suggests that we have a national campaign to mirror the Scottish Year of the Dad, which was last year. I understand that the previous Minister, who is now the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), agreed to look into that during a Westminster Hall debate this year. It linked attitudinal changes in relation to fatherhood with practical interventions at local level.

The CSJ says that we need to change outreach among public services such as children’s centres, maternity wards, health visitors and early years providers to ensure that they really do promote engagement with fathers and measure that. As has been mentioned, we could look again at shared parental leave to see how fathers could be encouraged to take that up more. New fathers say that they want better social and emotional support; only 25% feel that there is enough. I also encourage the Minister, as well as looking at the CSJ’s recommendations, to read the “Manifesto to strengthen families,” which I know he has a copy of. It is now supported by around 60 Back-Bench Conservative MPs and sets out a number of policy suggestions to Government, to directly improve the situation of fathers. For example, maternity services should maximise the chances of including fathers at an early stage, and fathers should be invited to antenatal appointments and fatherhood preparation classes to help them to support their partners. There is one south London hospital where a small fatherhood charity holds weekly preparation classes for fathers to be. That is very important because we know that those early years in a child’s life, from the age of one to three, is a period of great strain on family relationships and, unfortunately, of great break-up.

Hospitals should collect information about fathers’ experiences and about the importance of the NHS friends and families test, focusing their services on supporting the whole family. Similarly we should ensure that the Government finally bring into force schedule 6 to the Welfare Reform Act 2009, which requires all fathers’ names to be included on birth certificates, with appropriate exemptions. As well as improving the payment of child maintenance, that would enable local authorities to identify almost all fathers in their local area and ensure support could be offered to them at an early stage. Sceptics might say, “Well, we already register most fathers,” but it is often those who are most in need of help who disappear.

As the CSJ says, parenting classes should not just be a “middle-class preserve,” which sadly they are at present. In closing, the CSJ also says,

“The consequences of a father falling out of a child’s life are hugely significant, and any Government that is serious about tackling social mobility and improving the life chances of our children needs to take fatherhood seriously.”

[Ian Austin (in the Chair)]

Before I call Mr Clark, let me say that I will call the Opposition spokespeople at about 10.35 am. If Mr Day and Ms Sherriff speak for about seven minutes, we should be able to get to the Minister at about 10.50 am, so, Mr Clark, we will be moving on at about 10.35 am.

[Colin Clark (Gordon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Austin. I will do my best to keep it very brief. Thank you to my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) for securing this debate.

International Men’s Day raises some important issues, as we have heard from other hon. Members. I will try not to go over them again. I am a father of two little boys, so I declare an interest. I attended both their births and the prenatal classes, so I have done my best to start off well.

Equality should mean tackling discrimination issues for both genders, yet there is still too little recognition of the important contribution that men and boys make to our society and that they often face more social pressures than women do. As the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) said, that is not necessarily fair. This can lead to extreme levels of stress and anxiety, and in the worst cases a feeling of failure. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford explained, four in five suicides are by men—I am staggered. It is the biggest killer of men under the age of 35. It does not just happen in deprived areas. The downturn in the oil and gas industry in my own constituency in Aberdeenshire has created huge pressures on families and the main breadwinner. As the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire said, that may be a stereotype, but I am afraid that is the consequence.

Raising awareness about men’s wellbeing also means talking about their own physical health and recognising that men are more likely to die of cancer or heart disease. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford has said, the figures on that are available to us all. As we have heard, 95% of workplace fatalities are men. In my Gordon constituency, where we have had traditionally male-dominated employment—primarily oil and gas, agriculture and fishing—they have gone an awful long way in trying to reduce that. Particularly the fishing industry, which had a bad track record, is trying to improve that. Oil and gas now has a tremendously good track record. More women, of course, are going in to oil and gas, and there may be some correlation with improving safety.

In Scotland, men’s life expectancy is five years less than women’s. In all the statistics, that is true all over the world. Having said that, the aim of International Men’s Day is not to promote one gender over the other. It is not about who faces more discrimination, but calling for a more balanced approach to gender equality.

Hon. Members have spoken about personal cases in their own constituencies. I was recently contacted by the sister of an acting police officer—a man. She wrote to me telling me about his plight. His marriage had broken up. He was struggling to pay maintenance and keep a roof over his head. The most tragic issue for him was not seeing his children. While reading the email I realised that I actually knew him and I had absolutely no idea how much he was struggling with life—similarly to the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), who spoke about his own personal circumstances.

We must promote positive male role models and hardworking men to the benefit of all. Promoting that role model is important to males and females. I was delighted to see at the Remembrance Day in Inverurie how many youth organisations have men—and women—still running them, and to see that youth organisations are now pretty well gender neutral.

[Ian Austin (in the Chair)]

Mr Clark, I hope your speech is coming to an end.

[Colin Clark]

I am definitely coming to an end, Mr Austin.

Quickly, to shoot ahead, International Men’s Day improves gender relations, but it also creates a safer and better society, where each individual regardless of their gender is able to reach their full potential.

Education and Social Mobility

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

In my contribution, I hope to explain exactly why we need to move away from selection and towards inclusion in our education system.

The conclusions of the Social Mobility Commission will find much support in this House, not just among Opposition Members but, I hope, among Government Members as well. We still have not heard from the Prime Minister whether any of the recommendations will be adopted.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

Before we have to listen to the sixth-form debating points from Conservative Members, does my hon. Friend agree that what they ought to do is to set out the evidence for this policy? They should tell us where these schools will be, how many of them there will be, how much the policy will cost, how these schools will select their pupils, where the resources will come from, what the pupils will learn and how the schools will differ from existing ones.

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. There are clearly many questions to be answered about the evidence for such a policy.

I want to give the Education Secretary the chance to end this uncertainty in our school system. Can she tell us which of the commission’s recommendations she will be accepting, and whether the Government have rejected the recommendation on schools, in particular? The challenges that we face as a country go much further than this one misguided policy.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Redwood]

I do not think that we will get a better team by training them less, and no longer giving them any kind of elite education. I think that Opposition Members are being very obtuse.

Let me try a different argument. The Opposition’s second argument against grammar schools is that in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, where we have some good grammar schools, all the other schools must be suffering. Opposition Members write off and write down the many excellent comprehensive schools in areas that have access to grammar school places, in a quite unrealistic and unpleasant way.

I know my own area better than Buckinghamshire. We do not have any grammar schools in my constituency, but there are two excellent grammar schools just over the border in Reading, a girls’ school and a boys’ school, which take some of our brightest and academically most gifted pupils from the Wokingham area. Our comprehensive schools in Wokingham also contain great, academically gifted children. Those children, at the top of those schools, do not have to compete with the children at the grammar, and they go on to compete very successfully and get good places at elite universities. Opposition Members should not write off those schools, or pretend that they are some kind of failed secondary modern.

I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) reminded us that there are some very good secondary modern schools whose pupils achieve great things. My hon. Friend himself achieved great things before coming to the House, and some will consider it a great achievement that he is in the House now. I think that that shows that no one should write off any whole category of school. As an Opposition Member pointed out in a more honest moment, what really matters in a school is the talent of the teaching force and the good will and working spirit of the pupils. The two play off each other. That can be found in a good comprehensive, and it can be found in a good grammar school.

The Opposition must understand that we are not trying to create a series of schools for failures. We want to have great schools for everyone. We believe that selecting some pupils on the basis of academic ability and giving them elite academic training can make sense for them, but it does not write off the other schools.

[Ian Austin]

I am not at all opposed to giving the brightest pupils an elite education. That is not why I am worried about grammar schools. I am worried about grammar schools because they do not solve the central problems that our education system faces. Michael Wilshaw has said that we have “a mediocre education system”. When it comes to the vast majority of pupils, we are falling behind out international competitors. In a modern economy in which the innovation sector is creating jobs at 30 times the rate of the rest of the economy, we need to exploit the talents of all our young people. That is why I am worried about grammar schools.

[John Redwood]

I opened my speech with exactly that comment. I think that that is common ground. However, selecting some people who are good at football or good at academic subjects does not prevent us from providing a good education for everyone else. If we want to have more Nobel prize winners in the future, we should bear in mind that they are likely to be attending the great universities in our country. Do we not want to feed those great universities with the best possible talent from our schooling system, and should not those talented people have been given an education that stretches them and takes them further along the road to great work before they reach the universities? The most successful people at university have often had an extremely good education beforehand. They are self-starters, and understand the importance of that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

We face two major challenges in education in Britain. First, we are rapidly falling behind other countries for basic numeracy and literacy—not just Finland and South Korea, as has been traditional, but now even Estonia, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. That is one reason why Michael Wilshaw recently told the Education Committee that we have a mediocre education system in our country. Secondly, with the innovation economy creating jobs at a much higher rate than the economy as a whole, and with jobs that require no skills or low skills disappearing at a rapid rate, we need to educate all our young people to a high standard.

However, as we have heard, last week’s Social Mobility Commission report shows that compared with children from the most advantaged areas, children from deprived areas are 27 times more likely to go to an inadequate school, more likely to drop out of education at 16, and 30% less likely to study A-levels that could get them into a top university. White working-class boys are even worse off. New research by the Sutton Trust shows that three quarters are being so badly let down that they are failing to achieve five good GCSE grades. Let us compare that with the situation for pupils from independent schools: just five public schools send more pupils to Oxbridge than 2,000 state schools—two-thirds of the entire state sector; and despite accounting for just 7% of school pupils, those from independent schools represent seven out of 10 High Court judges, more than half our leading journalists and doctors, and more than a third of MPs.

I want to see the whole country united around the mission of driving up standards and opening up opportunity for all pupils, but grammars can improve social mobility only if poor children are able to go to them. Analysis by the Education Datalab shows that poor children are much less likely to get in than their better-off peers. Poor children have already had a poorer start to their education by the age of 11, making it harder for them to get into grammar schools; but even where two children have the same scores at key stage 2, the poorer child is less likely to pass an entry exam and get into a grammar school. In fact, in areas with selective grammar schools the gap between rich and poor is greater than it is in areas without any grammar schools at all. Grammar schools also put a barrier between these pupils and some of the country’s most experienced teachers: the Education Datalab also shows that 54% of teachers at grammars have been in the profession for more than 10 years, whereas at a secondary modern just 41% have the same experience.

We should be doing the opposite. We should have better schools for every child, and we should expand the gifted and talented programme. Instead of using scarce resources on new grammar schools, we should focus on improving early years education and tackling stubborn levels of under-achievement in areas such as the black country, and areas across the midlands and the north. We should provide incentives and support to train experienced teachers, get them into schools with poorer children and help them stay in the profession. Anyone who visits a school that has been turned around or seen a dramatic improvement in results will know that it is impossible without the inspirational leadership that brilliant heads provide. We need new ways of identifying, recruiting and training a new generation of headteachers.

New grammars will not tackle the fundamental problems that our education system faces. They will not transform the quality of education for all pupils or tackle the social mobility crisis that exists in Britain. The policy will do nothing to tackle the chronic shortage of teachers—the teacher recruitment and retention crisis. It will not help to identify, train and recruit a new generation of brilliant heads, improve early years education, which is the key to giving every child a first-class start, or improve the status and quality of vocational education. It will do nothing about the funding crisis facing post-16 education, and the deepest cuts that the further education sector has ever seen. Those are the issues that the Government should address.

We should all agree that education is our No. 1 priority. Let us sweep aside this old party political dogma. Instead of using time, energy and resources on expensive and time-consuming structural changes for which there is absolutely no evidence, let us have a national debate about education and involve all the parties, employers, and the teaching profession. Based on the evidence, we can then work out how a modern education system should be structured and what young people need to learn for the modern economy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz Kendall]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. There is nothing economically credible about paying more for problems that could have been prevented. Having a genuinely long-term economic policy means prioritising the early years. We should make it a national mission that every child starts school ready to learn. If the Prime Minister really wants a country that works for everyone, she should scrap the Government’s £1 billion inheritance tax cut for the wealthiest few and put that money into transforming early years services instead.

All the evidence shows that strong leadership and great teachers make the biggest difference in improving attainment in schools, particularly for disadvantaged children. For poor pupils, the difference between having a good teacher and a poor teacher is a whole year’s learning. Those pupils cannot wait and we should not let them. The Government should be focusing relentlessly on getting the best heads and teachers into the most challenging schools. New incentives should also be trialled, such as writing off a proportion of teachers’ student loans for each year that they teach at a particularly challenging school.

[Ian Austin]

Does my hon. Friend agree that expanding Teach First would be a good way of getting more high quality teachers into struggling schools?